Arab Spring: causes, outcomes, and regional impact

Affecting the Rest of the World
The Arab Spring can and will affect the rest of the world for the foreseeable future by acting as a representation of the will of the people over the tyranny of unpopular dictatorships. This spirit can already be seen in the populism sweeping through Europe and even in the U.S. Donald Trump (the billionaire candidate who embraced his “outsider” status by pledging to “drain the swamp” (Prupis, 2017) of Establishment politics in D.C.) won the election for president in 2016 over political mainstay Hillary Clinton, who represented both progressive liberalism and the status quo that had been carried on by Barack Obama for the 8 years prior. Trump’s victory was viewed as a moral victory for voters in the U.S. who wanted to send a message to D.C. that they wanted to see the bull let loose in the proverbial China shop: they wanted a president who would shake things up and put them first—not last—in the globalist game (VanGrasstek, 2016). Trump’s victory may have been a hollow victory for them as Trump has been able to keep many of campaign promises thus far—but the spirit of Arab Spring is still alive in the U.S. and those voters on the Left are also embracing it by looking to fresh democratic faces like Ocasio-Cortez for new, inspirational (and socialistic) leadership (Rubinstein, 2018). There is likely to be an increase in populism in the U.S. on both the Right and the Left, as voters reject the status quo—especially with the possibility of a recession looming, states going bankrupt, pensions at risk of being cut, jobs still being offshored, and the middle class continuing to shrink. Plus, more and more protests are occurring: first, there was Black Lives Matter, then there was the Alt-Right, then there was Antifa in response to the Alt-Right, then there was Proud Boys in response to Antifa. More and more factions are being created in the U.S. as tribalism mounts. Whether or not any of it will end in the actual overthrow of an elected leader is unlikely as the police state is quite powerful in the U.S. and it would basically take a foreign war to render the U.S. unstable. That may come sooner than later as the U.S. continues to pick fights with Russia, China, and Iran even as it recently has pledged to remove troops from Syria.
In Europe populism is also alive and well. The “yellow vests” are rioting and protesting in France due to the Macron government’s plan to raise taxes and keep borders open. In England, the British have voted to pull out of the EU and put Britain first just as the Americans voted to do when they elected Trump. Italy has seen its own populist 5-Star movement go head to head with Brussels over how the heavily indebted southern European state would manage its budget issues. Other states in Europe, such as Hungary and Poland are moving away from the centralist principles of the EU towards their own populist movements. Germans have quit supporting Merkel and her reign is coming to a close now as immigration becomes a big issue for them as well. Steve Bannon (one of the driving forces behind the Trump victory in 2016) is attempting to work with other populist leaders in Europe like Le Pen in France and Farrage in England to ensure that the spirit of populism is able to bite back against the authoritarianism of Brussels.
In China and Russia, the current leadership has a strong hold on power and both Putin and Xi are popular. Both want to establish a multi-polar world order to circumvent the rule of the U.S. So there is unlikely to be much uprising in their states that is at all similar to the Arab Spring.
Positive Influences to Derive from the Arab Spring
One of the main positive influences to derive from the Arab Spring is the power of social media. Social media played a huge rule in driving the popular revolts against dictators in the Middle East. Social media has allowed people to connect from different neighborhoods and regions of the country and world. It has facilitated the transfer and sharing of information, organization of people, and mobilization of groups with a great deal of felicity and spontaneity. Without social media, these uprisings would likely not have been possible, as the great effort put forward by people to organize and show support for demonstrations was only possible because of the ability to instantly connect, upload and share information online. That is why states like China have taken great measures to control social media, censor the Internet, and limit the extent to which citizens can access information. China knows that information is power and in the Digital Age, social media is the key to the spread of populist information. The power of the Internet and social media in particular is one of the key influences to derive from the Arab Spring. People all over the world are now more and more and aware of how to connect, support, and assist one another in movements like this.
Another positive influence to derive from the Arab Spring is the pressure that is now being put on dictators around the world. Populists are appearing all over the world and pushing back against the status quo, whether that is in England, the U.S., France, Italy, Poland, Hungary, the Netherlands, the Philippines, or Brazil. In much of the world, there is a sense that the people want to take back their own states from the powers that be and put themselves first. Arab Spring may have started in the Middle East but it is not an Arab-only phenomenon. It is a spirit of rejection of totalitarianism—a demand that more countries begin to pay attention to what the people of various nations actually want instead of organization their politics around principles that are not shared or embraced by the people.
There is also the realization that in some cases, populism can be co-opted by the powers that be in order to divert the will of the people away from effective and efficient change towards the aims of the powers that be. This realization is positive because it helps people to be mindful of the risks that are associated with populist movements and how to be careful and conscientious so as to prevent their movement from being hijacked. Some examples of this are in Russia, where the U.S. attempted to back Syrian rebels to oust Assad only to find Russia and Iran step in to prevent further destabilization in the Middle East. In Libya, the popular uprising was augmented by the U.S. and NATO, which ended not in any effective transfer of power but rather in considerable chaos and destabilization. Even in the U.S. with Occupy Wall Street, there was real anger and outrage towards the banks but the movement was ultimately co-opted by the powers that be and reduced to meaningless and empty sloganeering and demonstrations that eventually fizzled out. Now that people know what to be aware of when they engage in any type of protest, they can better guard against their movements being hijacked and steered towards an aim that is not correlated with what they actually want to achieve.
Some Negative Outcomes of the Arab Spring
The biggest negative outcome of the Arab Spring is that it has not consistently led to changes for the better. Libya is now a borderline terrorist state; Gaddafi may not have been beloved but he at least offered stability and order of a kind. Today, the state is a failed state and is largely in the hands of extremists. Iraq is in a similar situation, though that was more the result of a U.S. invasion than anything else. The attempt to lead an uprising in Syria has only resulted in Assad becoming more entrenched, as he won support from Russia and Iran, and it has made the U.S. look somewhat weak for its stance in supporting the rebels. The U.S. has thus lost influence in the Middle East, first by supporting NATO in the campaign to destroy Libya, and second by supporting the rebels in Syria and the Kurds against Turkey—neither of which has panned out successfully. This has in turn led to China, Russia, and Iran developing a new strategy to circumvent Western influence and initiate their own plan to develop a new multi-polar world to challenge Western hegemony. Thus, a negative outcome for the U.S. of Arab Spring has been the effect of being enticed too far to play a deciding role in the revolutions in the Middle East. Rather than allowing the revolutions to grow organically and proceed domestically on their own, the West instead chose to get involved and the outcome has not been pretty. Massive destruction in Syria, millions of displaced immigrants, millions more dead, and trillions in damages and costs—this is all that is to show after a decade of plotting, planning and intervening. As Scott and Carter (2015) point out, “no region in the world has received more US foreign aid than the Middle East” (p. 740)—and no region in the world has suffered more in recent times than the Middle East. The Arab Spring may have led to better outcomes if outsiders had not gotten involved—but the Middle East is such a flashpoint and such a rich region geopolitically speaking that is unrealistic to think that a crisis will not be viewed as an opportunity by world leaders looking for a way in. Russia stepped in to help Syria for reasons related to security and influence. It has developed a better relationship with Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria and China as a result. The Arab Spring was meant to be a locally-focused movement, but it has mainly opened the door for outsiders to come in and begin throwing their weight around.
Another negative outcome of the Arab Spring is that it has led to a crackdown on social media around the world—even in the U.S. The powers that be understand now how powerful social media can be, so they have become removing politically inflammatory content from YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Patreon, Vimeo and elsewhere. Anyone who challenges the politically correct line and gains a substantial following is at risk of being booted—and in an age where many activists support themselves by way of social media, such as by using Patreon and posting content to YouTube, this can rob these individuals of their livelihood. Individuals who discuss the Israeli-Palestine conflict, or who discuss other issues of sensitive natures, can lose their accounts in the blink of an eye. In Europe, content is being censored and in China, content is heavily censored—and all of it is done to protect the state from the people who may want to lead a movement towards change.
A hypothetical negative is the possibility of the Arab Spring leading to World War 3, with several world powers seeing the vulnerable position that the Arab states are in and each approaching like a ravenous wolf to devour what it can before another runs in and takes it. Libya was basically looted after Gaddafi was killed and all its weapons and wealth have disappeared, most likely to be used by terrorist organizations. If Russia, China and the U.S. cannot agree on how to help enable the Arab states to peacefully govern themselves, WWIII could be close at hand.
Long-Term Causes of the Arab Spring
The long-term causes of the Arab Spring included human rights violations over numerous years, political corruption, poverty, economic deterioration, dictatorship and so on. All of these issues were long in being formed and the Arab Spring movement thus was generated primarily from an organic movement within these countries aimed at resistance and revolution. From Tunisia to Bahrain, uprisings occurred because people formed movements and mobilized via social media to protest against the perceived injustices they felt (lack of job opportunities, high food prices, lack of democracy, lack of representation in government, lack of equitability, lack of civil and human rights, and so on). The long-term causes ran deep among the youths who were less invested in the power structures than their elders and thus had less of a vested interest in seeing that order maintained. They were inspired by the idea of forming a massive protest to foment political change.
Yet, because the Arab Spring, was primarily a youthful movement, with the Facebook Generation leading the pack in Egypt and Tunisia, the long-term causes were actually more immediate for these early protesters: like with the Black Lives Matter movement in the U.S., in Egypt the Arab Spring organizers were motivated to take action based on their perception of labor shortages, police violence and police brutality. In Tunisia, labor had a lot to do with it: the Tunisians were organizing a labor strike in order to obtain greater equitability. Protests had actually been occurring for years in Tunisia prior to Arab Spring, particularly in Gafsa, a mining district where protests had included hunger striking, sit-ins and rallies, all of which were focused on employment among young persons who wanted permanent jobs (Gobe, 2010). Egypt had seen its share of similar protests as there was a strong labor movement in the country dating back to 2004. Again, it was primarily a youth movement, however, that led to the Arab Spring in Egypt, as digital natives organized for a “long revolution” (Radsch, 2014). In Algeria, there had been food strikes, a sense of alienation from their government among the people, and growing social dissatisfaction towards the overall corruption within the Algerian government. The year before the Arab Spring, there had been nearly 10,000 riots and protests in Algeria (Chikhi, 2011)—so revolution was certainly in the air in each of these countries and had been for some time. Events came to a head in Tunisia when Mohamed Bouazizi, who had not been able to find gainful employment and so had turned to selling fruit on the side of the road, had all of his personal effects confiscated by local authorities. He committed suicide in a sign of remonstration to the government by setting himself on fire—like a Tibetan monk might have done in protest of Chinese authoritarianism (BBC, 2011). This shocking display of protest brought together a number of like-minded and outraged people from all walks of life in Tunisia and their organization and movement inspired others throughout the Middle East.
Thus, the causes of the Arab Spring were really a combination of long-simmering problems and new, spontaneous movements prompted by more immediate causes. The proliferation of social media helped drive Arab Spring, and the immolation of Bouazizi was certainly one of the more immediate causes. The protests that gained steam in response to the death of Bouazizi were widespread and international: from Tunisia, they spread to Jordan, Yemen, Egypt and on. The people in each of these countries shared a common lot: poor economic conditions and lack of economic opportunities. The governments in these lands were notorious for their corruption and had shown little interest in working to alleviate any of the burdens of the younger generation, whose outlook on their future was especially dim. With the immolation of Bouazizi, the future suddenly appeared all too bleak for all of them and in a universal act of resistance they banded together to fight back.






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